Chapter Text
The holidays come out of nowhere.
After Halloween, it seems like the days are blinking by in a haze of classes and homework and college essays and sending in application after application after application. It’s study sessions with all their friends piled in the living room on May and Peter’s floor in the tower, all of them hunched over textbooks and scribbling out notes and equations and editing papers until their hands ache. Harry, already in college and enrolled in his online classes, spends most of these study sessions on his laptop—the Stark brand one, the one he always flaunts around in front of his dad just to piss Norman off—and typing away, though no one knows if he's doing schoolwork or just fucking around online to pass the time. Judging by his straight A's, they assume it's the first thing. Except for Tony, who assumes that Harry is actively hacking into Oscorp's system just to fuck shit up.
(Tony took a liking to Harry approximately ten seconds after meeting him, when he had picked up six teens from Flash’s Halloween party and Harry has instantly hopped into the passenger’s seat and asked for a selfie. Obviously shocked, Tony had asked why, and Harry had a twisted, mischievous grin on his face when he explained that he thrived on making his—and these were his exact words—useless piece of self-absorbed shit of a sperm donor angry. Apparently, there’s a vein on Norman’s forehead that always pops out when he’s pissed. Harry is convinced that it’s evil and plotting to end the world. Tony thinks that Harry is the funniest kid he’s ever met and invited him to family dinner that upcoming Sunday.)
For Harley, it looks a little something like this:
He wakes up the day after Halloween and he’s lying on the floor with five other people, all of them still in their costumes from the night before, make up all smudged, Ned’s Thor wig askew, limbs tangled up in blankets upon blankets and candy wrappers scattered around them like causalities from a war. To his left, Harry is snoring, still in the dress from the party, though the heels are gone and he’s wearing a pair of Peter’s sweatpants beneath it. Which is… an entertaining sight, to say the least. Harley tries not to snort, somehow manages to suppress the urge and only lets out the tiniest of sleepy giggles, and them looks to his right, where Ned is sprawled out like a starfish, hugging his plastic replica of Thor’s hammer to his chest, his cheek smushed up against it as he lets out soft, even breaths. A few feet away from him is MJ, leaning her head back against the sofa with her knees curled up to her chest, a blanket draped over her and her skeleton makeup surprisingly intact, only somewhat smudged around her mouth from inhaling handfuls of chips and candy the night before. Flash is passed out next to her, curled up in a ball and using his hands as some kind of makeshift pillow, looking peaceful and relaxed in a way that Harley has never seen before—quite the difference, compared to the tense shoulders and clenched jaw that Flash is usually sporting at school, constantly having some kind of inner war with himself that no one else understands. Harley’s still kind of reeling at seeing him here, with the rest of them, and not separating himself.
Of course, Harley’s attention is drawn away from his friends when Peter shifts, and his eyes snap over to where his boyfriend lays, his cheek pressed to Harley’s collarbone, arms wound around Harley’s waist and their legs tangled with the large blanket that they’re sharing. It’s a little bit gross, the little damp spot on Harley’s deer onesie that spells out the fact that Peter had been drooling in his sleep at one point, but he can’t bring himself to care, feels all that romcom, fuzzy tummy, mushy gushy bullshit that he spent his entire childhood rolling his eyes at—ironic, really, at how fast he fell ass deep into his own dating a superhero romance before he was seventeen—and barely manages the urge not to coo like some stupid lovestruck idiot while he brings up a hand to push back Peter’s hair and kiss him on the forehead.
Peter, with the whole heightened senses shit making it hard for him to stay asleep, blearily blinks at him and offers him a groggy grin and Harley’s chest cries out in some kind of happiness and they don’t bother with talking or anything, just lazily kiss and giggle and somehow manage to cuddle closer together until MJ wakes up, takes one look at them, and then chucks a pillow at Harley’s head before demanding that someone gets up and makes them pancakes and hot chocolate.
After that, it’s an endless amount of those study sessions, which Flash avoids like the plague at first. Then again, after leaving the tower the day after Halloween, Flash kind of avoids all of them like the plague—except for Harry, who he swapped numbers with and somehow manages to text on the regular. He succeeds in ducking around corners and hiding from view for about a week and a half, until they’re able to corner him in the hall, and that fearful look in his eyes, like he’s expecting to be told off or some shit, melts into some kind of warm confusion when all they do is tell him that they’re gonna be hanging out at the tower again that weekend. He doesn’t say he’s gonna go, but he still shows up on Saturday, and, somehow, in a weird, borderline uncomfortable yet entirely accepted way, he fits with them, like a piece of some kind of puzzle. Similar to Harry, too, who only seems to go back to his own house to grab clothes or something before returning to the Parker’s floor at the tower, where the guest room is quickly becoming his own, with a mixture of some of Ned and MJ’s stuff that they forget to take home, and even a couple of Flash’s things that he forgets after study sessions, movie nights and Mario Kart competitions.
With all that, the days don’t even feel like days, more like little blips that pass by too quickly. Before anyone knows it, it’s Thanksgiving, which none of them really give a shit about—a crappy holiday based on something that shouldn’t be celebrated—but the kids all have four-day weekends because of it, and they have a sort of get together type of event the day after Thanksgiving. Ned brings his family, MJ comes with her parents, Flash brings his little sister, Jesse—who ends up instantly clicking with Ned’s little sister, the two pretty much best friends by the end of the night—and even Miles and his parents come, too. Clint flies in with Laura and their kids. Scott brings Hope and Cassie. It’s held on the communal floor below the pent house but above where Steve and Sam and all of them stay, giving plenty of room for everyone to lounge around and chow down on whatever they want—any of the various dishes that people made and brought, or any of the pizza and take out that Tony, Peter, and Harley insisted on ordering, if only because Harley and Peter have been craving Chinese food and Tony loves a good pizza.
It’s a great day. Flash looks like he might pass out when he meets Natasha, has to sit down after Sam and Bucky laugh at something he says. Ned and MJ have visited the tower enough that any sort of hero worshiping (mostly from Ned, though MJ was definitely star struck when she first met Nat, Wanda, and Pepper) has faded into a general sense of comfort, jokes around with the group of superheroes like they’re just some kind of extended family at a backyard barbecue. Harry—and this shouldn’t be a surprise, really, given the fact that he was raised in the spotlight, taught from the time he was a toddler how to win people over with a smile and charisma—slides right in with ease, only really looks bashful when Harley loudly announces the fact that Harry was Peter’s first crush, though he just laughs when he realizes that Harley isn’t bringing it up in some kind of spite, only to tease both his boyfriend and his new friend.
“Did you like him?” Harley ends up asking, when they both wind up in the kitchen getting drinks, everyone else in the living room. It’s more curiosity than anything else, a question that crossed over his mind a few days ago, that rises again now that they’re alone. “Peter, I mean. When you were kids.”
Harry looks thoughtful for a second, opens up a Pepsi and takes a long, slow sip of it. “I never really thought about it, to be honest,” he ends up saying, a few moments later. “I… I think so. Maybe. I don’t know if it was, like, an actual crush, or if it was just an admiration thing, you know? Even though we were nine, Pete was a force to be reckoned with. Never told the bullies to leave him alone, but got sent to the office for getting in fights when they tried to mess with me despite the fact that I was bigger and stronger and should have been the one protecting his dumbass. A little warrior, that’s what he was.”
That makes Harley chuckle a bit, nodding. “Yeah, that definitely sounds like him.” There’s a short pause, where Harley opens his own soda and they both take a drink, before that curiosity rears its head again and he finds himself asking, “Do you like him now? Like… a crush, not like a friend.”
Again, there’s a moment of nothing, where Harry seems to consider the question, before he shakes his head. “Nah, I don’t think so. Maybe, for, like, a second, when he texted me back, but I think that was just some kind of excitement about seeing him again, you know? But before anything could, like, actually develop, he sent me about two dozen texts about you, and that was just waxing poetry about your eyes. Or, actually, it might have been about your laugh. I’m not sure. There was so much, I didn’t read it all.”
“Oh my god,” Harley breathes, some kind of sheepish yet smitten blush rising on his face at the mere idea of Peter boasting about him so blatantly like that. “He’s such an idiot. My dumb, stupid idiot.”
“Yeah, he’s definitely head over heels for you, man,” Harry snickers, some kind of grin tugging at the end of his lips, somewhere between a warm smile and a smug kind of smirk. Harley rolls his eyes, but finds insistent little butterflies swarming his stomach when he hears Peter’s laugh bounce off the walls and into the kitchen, making him perk up without even realizing it. Harry laughs outright at him then, claps a hand on his shoulder and tells him, “It’s cute, don’t worry. Both of you are so into each other, it’s actually insane. Literally the second I saw you guys together at the party, my first thought was just, like, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. And I hadn’t even met you, that was just based off what Peter texted me and seeing you two together.” Then, taking on a curious tone of his own, he asks, “Would it matter? If I did like Peter like that? Like, what would you do if I did?”
Harley shrugs, tries to pretend his face isn’t sporting a pleased sort of blush, and answers with, “Honestly? It wouldn’t matter, no. I mean, Flash literally kissed both of us and we both thought it was the funniest thing in the world, so…” he trails off, furrows his brow a bit. “I guess I’m just not really worried about stuff like that. He’d tell me if anything happened, and we… we’ve talked about a lot of stuff, y’know? ‘Cause, like, we know that we’re still kids, and we know that, even when we turn eighteen, we’re still gonna be young and things could change, and that’s not something to be, like… resentful or scared of. Like, if—if someone liked him and he ended up liking them back, then he wouldn’t lie about it or anything. He’d tell me, and we’d talk it out and figure out what to do about it, and the same thing would happen if someone liked me, but vice versa, ‘cause we—we know that teenage relationships rarely last after high school, and that’s not a bad thing. I mean, thinking about—about him breaking up with me, that sucks, and I hope it never happens, but if he ever did, I’d still want him in my life, ‘cause he was my friend first, and he said that he’d want the same, so, if that kind of situation ever came up, we’d do whatever we could to make it as easy as possible. And, for your question, if—if you liked Peter, then that’d just be how it is. As long as you didn’t try to, like, purposefully hurt either of us, then I trust him, and I trust you, and even if I didn’t trust you, I trust him enough to still not worry about it. Y’know?”
For a long moment, Harry is silent, looking at Harley like he’s just sprouted a second head or something. When he finally responds, he sound incredulous, asking, “Are you two seriously only seventeen?” Harley crinkles up his nose in silent confusion, and Harry just shakes his head. “Dude, that was, like, the most mature thing I have ever heard anyone say. Like, anyone, ever. And I’ve sat in on a shit ton of meetings with my dad before, where they’re supposed to be all mature and professional, but all those whiney assholes sound like entitled children compared to this. You and Pete seriously talked about all that?”
“Yeah,” Harley says, a bit slow, shifting his weight awkwardly from foot to foot. “Shouldn’t everyone?”
“Everyone should, yeah,” Harry agrees, “but most married couples don’t even talk about that shit. You’re, like, lightyears ahead of at least ninety percent of the population. Expecially the hets, man. They’re just now discovering what communication even means, and here you two are, a couple of seventeen year old queers who’ve been together for, like, fuckin’, four or five months, and—”
Harley clears his throat. “Uh, it’s actually, um—it’s six months. Six months and ten days. Or, well, six months and ten days since I asked him to be my boyfriend, on May twelth. Our first kiss was May third, and we kind of basically started unofficially dating on the fourth, but—that’s not the point. Sorry.”
It looks like Harry is stuck somewhere between laughing at Harley’s interruption and snarking at him for interrupting in the first place, but he settles on rolling his eyes and continuing instead. “Like I was saying before you cut me off, you two are just a couple of teenager queer kids who’ve only been together for six months—and ten days, apparently, since that’s so important—and you’ve already got a healthier foundation for your relationship than a majority of happy gay couples that have been married for decades. It’s just—it’s impressive, I guess. You two are good for each other. Perfect for each other, maybe.”
At that kind of borderline praise, Harley can’t help but grin and think that he agrees, but he doesn’t know how to say that to anyone who isn’t Peter—partially because he hasn’t even said it to Peter yet, is waiting until he turns eighteen, per their agreement—and instead he changes the subject, asks, “So, what do you think of Flash?” At Harry’s inquisitive look, Harley explains, “We weren’t really friends, before the Halloween party, y’know? And it’s still kind of off, between me, Pete n’ him—not because of the kissing thing, ‘cause, like I said, Pete and I just think it was funny, the way it happened and everything, but Flash was kind of—kind of a dick, and the first month or two that I was here, I pretty much hated him ‘cause I assumed he was just another piece of shit bully, and it’s not that I don’t like him or whatever, ‘cause I know more now and I—I trust him, I do, but it’s weird for me, a little bit. I’m just curious, I guess.”
“Huh.” Harry falters a bit, sips his soda, then simply smirks and says, “He’s good. Funny. Cute, too.”
Then Harry leaves the kitchen with a pep in his step and Harley can only blink in some kind of surprise before slowly thinking that, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense, actually. And, when he makes his way back to the living room and sees that Harry is already sitting next to Flash and sharing the rest of his Pepsi with him, Harley finds himself rooting for that. For them.
They’d be good for each other, he thinks.
Once Thanksgiving weekend passes, the rest of November seems to fade away with it, and December comes around without any warning, end of the semester bringing them finals upon finals and even more college application due dates and it doesn’t even feel like the holiday season because all there seems to be is stress, stress, and some more stress sprinkled on top of the stress that’s already there. Study sessions turn into designated napping time just so they actually find time to sleep, and by the time the final day of the semester comes, December 19th marking the end of their suffering and the start of winter break, Harley feels like he’s been hit by approximately thirteen trucks. In a row. And then five trains, too.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” he tells Peter, the two of them leaning against each other on the front steps of the school, practically falling asleep there while waiting for Happy to pick them up, “but I think I miss Rose Hill right now. Finals were so easy there. I didn’t even have to try. Here, though…”
Peter lets out some kind of tired, half-assed groan, pushing his sunglasses further up his nose despite the fact that there’s a layer of ice on the ground, headache throbbing behind his eyes.
Harley snickers, voice softer. “Yeah, that’s pretty much what I was thinking.”
“You’re still thinking?” Peter asks. “What’s that like? My brain’s too fried for thoughts.”
“It sucks.” Harley doesn’t miss a beat. “It’s dumb. Thinking is stupid and I don’t want to do it again for at least twenty four hours. Or, like, a year. Ten years. It’s… a zero out of ten. Would not recommend.”
It’s a really half assed attempt at joking—seriously, he may still be thinking, but thinking kind of hurts, so the outcome isn’t all that great right now—but Peter still snorts, only to immediately flinch at the way the sudden movement makes his entire skull cry out in pain. “Oh, god. Laughing is bad. Everything is bad.”
Frowning a bit, Harley adjusts how they’re sitting, doesn’t really care about looking too cuddly in public as he scooches over and guides Peter until his head is laying in Harley’s lap. Carefully, he tugs the hood of Peter’s sweatshirt (which is, upon a second glance, actually a sweatshirt that has been accidentally passed around their friend group, Harry leaving it in Harley’s room, Harley leaving it at Ned’s house, Ned lending it to Flash a week ago, Flash shoving it at MJ when she said she was cold a few days prior, and MJ leaving it at the tower last night, where Peter grabbed it without thought this morning) up and over Peter’s head to help block out a bit more light. “You have the noise blockers with you, right?”
Peter hums, already relaxing a bit as he nods. “Yeah. Backpack. Small pocket.”
“Perfect,” Harley murmurs, having easy access to said pocket, only needing a few second to open it, root around for the familiar case they built towards the end of summer, and zip the pocket shut again, wasting no time before he fumbles open the case and takes out the little devices—which, after further development, getting them to damn near perfection, now resemble some sort of mixture between a hearing aid and an off brand Air Pod—and gently turns one of Peter’s hand to rest them in his palm. Peter lets out another hum, this one a silent sort of thanks, and moves to put them in his ears, almost instantly melting when they’re properly in place and instantly block out about ninety percent of all surrounding sounds. Not all sound, thankfully, allowing Harley to softly ask, “Did you text Happy to bring meds?”
Letting out some kind of half sniffle, half sigh, Peter mumbles, “No. He wouldn’t have had time to get it.”
Harley frowns, reaching for his phone, tucked in his back pocket. “But—”
“Oi, Little Keener,” a familiar voice calls, making Harley freeze. “You gonna keep me waitin’ or what?”
“Oh my god,” Harley says, eyes wide, not moving. A pair of footsteps start to approach them, and, even though most of Peter’s face is hidden by the hood of his sweatshirt, Harley can see the tired grin that pulls at his lips as he sluggishly pushes himself into a sitting position, no longer leaning against Harley.
In a half assed version of a smug tone, Peter tells him, “Christmas starts today,” and then rests his elbows on his knees in order to rest his head against his forearms, too out of it to even pretend he has energy.
Part of Harley wants to stay where he is, wants to offer Peter any comfort he can, but he also knows that Peter will just feel bad later if Harley gave up this greeting for him. So, vowing to keep this quick in order to make sure Peter gets home soon, Harley looks up and grins when his eyes land on the crooked smile of one Robby Johnson, standing about five feet away with his hands in his pockets and a quirk to his brow. Harley staggers to his feet, gets out another, “Oh my god,” before sprinting forward to hug the man, laughing lightly when Robby does what he always does, spins him around like he’s just little kid rather than an almost-adult that’s almost taller than him. “What the hell are you doing here?!”
“Christmas time, Little Keener,” Robby tells him simply, letting him go and holding him at an arms length with love shimmering in his eyes. “Your boy set this all up, got in contact with your Ma to have her talk to me. Damn near didn’t come ‘cause he said Stark would be payin’ for travel, but we made a deal for me to pay him back, and I couldn’t say no to an opportunity to see ya’.” His hazel eyes sweep across the front of Midtown in some kind of awe, letting out a low whistle. “Nice school, kid. It’s good here, yeah? City treatin’ you good? Everyone here doin’ you right?”
Harley nods, his earlier grogginess forgotten in his excitement. “It’s great, Robs. It’s amazing. I love it.”
Robby’s gaze drifts down, lands on Peter, who’s fully curling in on himself on the front steps and starting to visibly shake a little bit. Concern draws his brows together. “What’s wrong with ‘im?”
Looking over his shoulder, Harley frowns and says, “He kind of, um… he has sensory problems, and headaches, and we just finished finals week so his head is killing him. We gotta, um—” he turns around again, looks behind Robby with a deeper frown. “How’d you get here? Did you drive yourself?”
“Christ, no,” Robby chuckles. “Drivin’ in a big city when I’ve never left Rose Hill would not end well, I can promise you that. Nah, Stark had a driver bring me. Said he’d park in the lot ‘round the corner just in case we ended up takin’ forever to get back to the car, or something like that. Didn’t seem very patient.”
“Okay,” Harley says, gnawing on his inner cheek as he tries to think of the easiest way to get Peter from here to the car. “Okay, um—I’m super excited that you’re here, Robs, but he needs to get home, like, as fast as possible. Do you think you could take his bag? I don’t think he can really walk on his own. Or, at least, not very well. Last time he tried while like this, he almost walked in front of a bus, so…”
From the steps, Peter lets out a groan and grumbles out, “That bus was speeding. S’not my fault.”
Harley rolls his eyes. “Honey, there are at least fourty seven reasons why you should have been able to avoid that mess, and we both know it. Take off your bag, and then I’m gonna help you stand, okay?”
“Mother hen,” Peter murmurs, but carefully unfurls himself to pull his arms from his backpack straps, letting it rest on the step behind him as he instantly holds out his hands and waits for Harley to grab them. Robby doesn’t say anything, just takes Peter’s backpack and swings it over his shoulder, trails behind them when Harley wraps an arm around Peter’s waist to help keep him stable, and, when Peter lets his head lull to the side to rest against Harley’s shoulder, he makes sure to say, “It’s nice to see you again, Mister Robby, sir. I promise I’ll be actually alive and functional in, like, an hour. Finals just suck a lot and kind of killed me a little bit, but I'll properly say hi when I'm not dying.”
And Robby still doesn’t speak, but he smiles, a little fond sort of smile, and gives Harley a nod. A good one, the action says. Harley grins back at him and thinks, I know.